


Apex

by alderations



Series: Genyatta Week 2018 [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Recovery, Self-Acceptance, post-blackwatch pre-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 17:06:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13663473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: Zenyatta said that it was a small victory, his concern for his own well-being. Genji thought it more likely that he was only hurting himself in a different way. He woke up barely a meter from Zenyatta, hands clenched around his forearms, shivering with something sharper than cold and heavier than the stone underneath him.





	Apex

Day 1 - Music/Dance

 

There was a song blasting somewhere, maybe twenty meters away, maybe two. Genji’s senses were too fucked up to let him know. The music was awfully modern compared to the monastery’s usual soundtrack, though Genji barely heard more than rhythmic fuzz and, somewhere, the gentle  _ clunk-clunk _ of metal feet against soft earth as the omnic monks danced. Ideally, they didn’t know that he was here, huddled behind the gnarled remains of a tree that had died here decades ago, shaking like a moth in the wind.

 

Ideally. Some of the monks were too smart for their own good. His mentor, not assigned to him but simply attached as if Genji were a magnet of self-loathing and poison, was dancing along with the rest of the group, just floating a few feet off the ground where the rest of them stayed earthbound like  _ normal  _ creatures. If anyone could sense Genji’s every emotion from a distance, it was Zenyatta, and that was the only reason he bothered to hide himself in the first place.

 

The song switched. Genji flinched at the change of rhythm, and then again at the thought that he was so easily disrupted.  _ Weak.  _ He heard the word in Hanzo’s voice, in his head, and his body shuddered in horror.

 

Six years, now, and he couldn’t get away from the image of his brother smeared in his blood and raising his  _ katana  _ to kill.

 

Genji shook his head until it hurt. No time to think about  _ him  _ now. He had other feelings to deal with, apparently, feelings that glinted white-gold in the thin mountain daylight. There was no way to explain away the pain scouring his chest, clenching his heart and lungs and viscera even as he failed to breathe. Good thing his cybernetics took care of that for him. It felt like a brick was resting right beneath his solar plexus, pressing down on every remaining bit of human inside his metal torso. He’d scream, if he could, but at the moment he was pretty sure that any attempt would end with him choking on the ground, surrounded by a cluster of concerned monks. Less than ideal.

 

Monks. The thought again—he thought it was Hanzo that was bothering him, but the feeling had only swelled as he turned his focus from the past and to the present. Or, well, the more immediate past. He had spent the night asleep in Zenyatta’s room, on a pallet of threadbare blankets that Zenyatta himself had likely never used, as a storm blustered over the mountain and buffeted the monastery. Genji hadn’t trusted himself to stay safe while the blizzard passed, too overwhelmed by the need to stand out in the snow and  _ drown,  _ so he had pleaded for the safety of his master’s watchful optic sensors.

 

Zenyatta said that it was a small victory, his concern for his own well-being. Genji thought it more likely that he was only hurting himself in a different way. He woke up barely a meter from Zenyatta, hands clenched around his forearms, shivering with something sharper than cold and heavier than the stone underneath him.

 

He could still barely make out the music, since his head was wrapped so firmly in his own arms, but despite his efforts, a few voices floated through. Other monks, other visitors, Zenyatta. Deep and golden. Genji trembled with every attempt at a breath. His fingers curled against his will as if they could grasp that voice and pull it closer, hold it, keep it, as if Zenyatta would float willingly into his embrace and not cast him off like the steely deadweight that he—

 

“Genji.”

 

—was.

 

The vents on his metal shoulder popped open and released a cloud of steam, white in the frigid air, as Genji released his head from his own arms and stared up at Zenyatta. No, not up—his mentor had settled to the ground in front of him, at his level, and he was now reaching out with one delicate hand to close the endless space between them.

 

“May I?” he asked, and his voice reverberated through Genji even before he hesitantly offered up his organic hand.

 

Zenyatta’s touch was so gentle that even Genji’s human nerves failed to process it for a few moments, and then like a balm of sunlight, it spread across his palm. Despite the icy air and the frozen earth underneath him, Zenyatta’s hand was comfortably warm, less than a human’s but enough to feel alive. Genji shivered. All at once he felt the isolation of this spot, of the other monks dancing away behind the tree while he sat, sheltered from everything but himself. Without his arms wrapped around his head, he could hear the music clearly now. It had changed again. The beat was simple, stark, almost militaristic, but the repetition held on to his anguished heart and reminded it, if nothing else, of the way time flowed and drifted alongside him.

 

He blinked tears out of his eyes and looked up at Zenyatta. His mentor was watching him, forehead aglow but eyes dim as usual, and as longing strangled the breath of peace in his chest, Genji started to feel the music through his hand. Not quite a vibration, not sound, but the knowledge that the music was passing from Zenyatta’s hand, through his, into his bones—steel and collagen—until the familiarity thrumming in the song softened under his armor. Without thinking, he extended his other hand, and Zenyatta gladly met it.

 

“Is this what it’s like?” murmured Genji, forcing the words past a sob building in his chest. “Being a person.  _ Feeling.  _ Has it always been like this?”

 

Zenyatta tipped his head to one side, rubbed his metal thumb across the back of Genji’s hand, and hummed. “You tell me.”

 

The music swelled, slowed, and finally stopped. In its absence, the mountain sat so still that Genji could have been floating, unattached, his body gone and his fears gone and his moments of desperate envy left to the whims of the wind. Yet, he was anchored to Zenyatta’s hands. The warmth spreading from his mentor’s touch smothered some of the irrational fear in his ribcage, but he knew that most of it would never fade, that he would have to learn to live with it if he learned to live at all. Not to mention the stabbing pain of sadness in his gut. Human or not, he felt  _ something,  _ particularly when Zenyatta held his hands and waited with a mountain’s patience for his every revelation, and he had to live with that something.

 

He thought of waking on the chilled blankets, on Zenyatta’s floor, and looking up to see the omnic haloed with the snowy sunrise.

 

Living through this was worth it, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> me: I already did a genyatta week, I need to buckle down and work on lmcott, I have so much homework  
> me to me: vent your emotional issues via genji  
> me: shit u rite
> 
> I have some...hefty problems with jealousy. It affects my friendships somewhat often and my (extremely rare) romantic relationships constantly, and it isolates me in a lot of ways, and even though I've worked on it for years (and it's gotten IMMENSELY better), it's still a major part of my personality and my day-to-day struggle. I also have Emotions now, since I'm on T and apparently I haven't had a "feeling" since I was, like, 8. This is an unfortunate combination. I feel a lot of things, so I decided that Genji should also feel a lot of things.
> 
> I'm not even sure if this came off as jealousy or just recovery (let me know your thoughts?) but it had the desired effect. For now, it's bedtime for me.


End file.
